Journal title
Dur. 1st rev. rnd
Tot. handling time
Imm. rejection time
Num. rev. reports
Report quality
Overall rating
Outcome
Motivation:
Manuscript passed the "To Advisor" stage after initial submission and stayed "under considerations" with a given editor for few more days. In the end it was a standard desk rejection with the text below.
"Because your manuscript was not given a high priority rating during the initial screening process, we have decided not to proceed to in-depth review. The overall view is that the scope and focus of your paper make it more appropriate for a more specialized journal. We are therefore notifying you so that you can seek publication elsewhere.
We now receive many more interesting papers than we can publish. We therefore send for in-depth review only those papers most likely to be ultimately published in Science. Papers are selected on the basis of discipline, novelty, and general significance, in addition to the usual criteria for publication in specialized journals. Therefore, our decision is not necessarily a reflection of the quality of your research but rather of our stringent space limitations."
"Because your manuscript was not given a high priority rating during the initial screening process, we have decided not to proceed to in-depth review. The overall view is that the scope and focus of your paper make it more appropriate for a more specialized journal. We are therefore notifying you so that you can seek publication elsewhere.
We now receive many more interesting papers than we can publish. We therefore send for in-depth review only those papers most likely to be ultimately published in Science. Papers are selected on the basis of discipline, novelty, and general significance, in addition to the usual criteria for publication in specialized journals. Therefore, our decision is not necessarily a reflection of the quality of your research but rather of our stringent space limitations."
Motivation:
Publishing with Current Biology was a great experience. The editorial team was exceptionally helpful and very responsive. The reviews we received were critical yet thoughtful and constructive. Ultimately, our paper was available online within about 5.5 months from the original submission. I would definitely submit another manuscript here in the future.
Motivation:
The manuscript was suggested to be published in a more specialized journal.
Motivation:
We submitted a manuscript to this journal about microbial cell wall structure. The handling time of the manuscript was fast, which is the only positive remark we have about this experience. The quality of the reviewers reports was beyong abysmal. The manuscript was clearly handed to people who had very little experience in the subject area. They did not question any experimental aspect or the discussion of our data. We used biophysical methods and one reviewer actually used the phrase "Byophysical data do not have biological relevance", which is a very problematic remark. Said reviewer also couldn't be professional enough to phrase his feelings towards the manuscript in a polite manner, while displaying a very poor knowledge of our subject area's literature. Sadly, we were not given a right to respond to his comments, which would have been very easy to do. The manuscript is now published in a much better journal.
Motivation:
Expeditious, no-nonsense review process.
Motivation:
expeditious reviews with reasonable requests
Motivation:
Quick and reasonable reviews.
Motivation:
It was not clear whether the reviewers recommended rejection or major revisions. Both reviewers provided detailed assessment with the list of parts, which needed correction, which implied that major revisions was their preferred verdict. However, the Editor rejected the manuscript. The context implies that our methodology was the major issue, especially the absence of XRD and Raman spectral analysis.
Motivation:
The review process was of high quality and fair, but took a lot of time. It seemed they had difficulties finding reviewers. Even though the reviewers voted for "major revision", the resubmitted manuscript was treated as a new submission. Thus, the dates of submission and acceptance which are shown on the paper are actually only representing the time after the first round of reviews and are not reflecting the whole process.
Motivation:
The first round decision (i.e., from initial submission to the first round decision following reviews) did take a long time. The quality of the reviews varied, but it helped that the editor got 3 reviewers for my paper. I did get some good feedback and I think it was warranted to have 3 reviewers on this paper. Following the first round of reviews and decision, the length for the remainder of the process was mostly because I took the full time to submit revisions. The editor made timely decisions and also provided very helpful feedback and summaries of the 3 reviewers statements. I did not particularly like the delivery system for the reviews as some of the general fields are not all that helpful. The reviews did greatly improve my paper and I was very happy overall with the process. The process moves very quickly once the article is accepted, which is also very nice. I had a really great editor so that definitely made my experience very positive. It is also helpful that they have the waiver/fee assistance for graduate students that do not have funding to pay the open access/publication fee.
Motivation:
The review process was accurate and useful. The manuscript was carefully evaluated in every aspect by both the reviewers (which were extremely competent on the subject of the paper) and by the editor. This process greatly improved the manuscript.
Motivation:
Beyond the extremely long time it took the editor to make a decision on the paper, neither the editor nor his staff answered two messages during this long process when I inquired about the status of the paper. The interface showed that paper was "awaiting editorial decision" for many weeks and then the status changed to "awaiting reviewers selection" and then about a week later the editor suddenly informed me that he decided not to sent it to review and apologized for the long delay because he was traveling. This shows utter disregard to authors' time and I do not recommend submitting papers to this journal, despite its impact factor.
Motivation:
Overall it was a productive revision process. Revision took the apropriate time and comments were constructive. What we did not like about the revision process was Quality Check process. While quality check and copyright related comments from editorial team was meaningfull and helpfull, every time we adressed the manuscript quality related issue it took over a week, for manuscript to be processed further sometimes to another quality related matter that took another week for editorial team to review. It is understndable however, giving the high volume of publications Sci Rep is dealing with. We have never recived the reviewers responce after we sumitted revised manuscript just outright acceptance from the editor, even though from the manuscript status page we knew that manuscript went throug another peer review cycle.
Motivation:
One of the three reviews seemed hypercritical.
Motivation:
The journal has the usual peer review process however provided reviews are superficial relative to how long they take to get provided.
Motivation:
The Manuscript is under review since one year. I sent further reviewer suggestions but the journal is not able to handle it.
Motivation:
After 7 months, the paper was rejected with no real feedback on quality. I sent several emails after 3 months with no response.
17.4 weeks
23.1 weeks
n/a
2 reports
Accepted
Motivation:
The reviewers were a bit harsh but fair. The editorial process was terribly long and frustrating.
Motivation:
Remarks of one of the reviewers indicated that he was not familiar with the statistical method used in the manuscript (information-theoretic approach). Nevertheless, the reviewer criticised the statistical analysis and even made an incorrect statement about one aspect of it (interpretation of the odds ratio). Two editors, who rated the manuscript, did not dismiss the obviously untrue comments on the statistics and the manuscript was rejected. There were other reasons for rejection, too, and I do accept them, but the statistical issues should not have been mentioned among them and/or perhaps a third review could have been invited.
Motivation:
The quality of the review for this manuscript was of a high quality with the reviewer even going to the detail of matching protocol procedures to the final manuscripts methods to ensure the quality of the submission was high.
Motivation:
The paper was transferred from another NPG journal where it was rejected after review and the reviewers transferred with it. The deputy editor personally handled the transfer, was responsive, and accepted the manuscript after reading the revised copy and the responses to reviewers without sending it out for further review. It was a seamless transfer and we're happy with the process at SR.
Motivation:
The manuscript was simply rejected. Thus rejecting for future submissions with revisions. Rejection is informed immediately without any delay.
Motivation:
My experience with Nature Communications was the worst I've had out of the 13 different journals I have published in. Initially, there was a delay in the review of our manuscript because they could not track down the third reviewer they selected. Then after waiting another month they still could not get the reviews so they sent us low-quality reviews. One simply said accept as is, the other literally stated they did not read the whole paper because they didn't like it. Our handling editor had no familiarity with the subject matter and was therefore unable to address the integrity and quality of these reviews or provide their own opinion. We then successfully appealed for a revised manuscript to be sent to a third reviewer. After almost 3 months, we received two more reviews from the two original reviewers, which contained almost the exact same responses. This was curious given that the sole request in our appeal was to send our paper to a new reviewer. But we decided not to pursue the issue further. Ultimately, we were failed by the handling editor, who should have done a better job at managing the chosen reviewers and inspecting their reviews for quality and potential bias before accepting them.
Motivation:
The time from submission to acceptance was acceptable and the quality of the feedback from reviewers was high.